Thread by @GreyAlien

Good news everyone! It does seem like my formula of Steam week 1 sales = wishlists x 0.5 still holds true in 2019, at least based on a few devs I've spoken to.

Anyway, please wishlist our game Ancient Enemy :-)
store.steampowered.com/app/993790/Anc…

How many do you need? Here's an example to break even in week 1:
- Budget = $100K
- Gross sales required in year 1 = $154K ish.
- Unit price = $15
- Full price units required = 10,266
- Pre-launch wishlists required = 20,533

If you plan to break even in the first year, then you can divide the year 1 total revenue by approx. 5 to get the week 1 total. So:
- $154K / 5 = $30,800 week 1
- Full price units required = 2053
- Pre-launch wishlists required = 4106

Don't forget that most games launch with a discount of around 10%-15%, so that means you need to sell more units and you need more wishlists.

Also if you have a lot of refunds or sales in countries with a lower price then that'll lower your gross revenue.

In order to get anywhere near 5x week1 sales in year1 you'll need to keep putting the game on sale, and "keep the game alive" with updates etc. Also if you don't get a decent launch that may affect your "popularity" rating on Steam and then the algorithm won't send much traffic.

That's the same way it's always been but it might have got worse since Oct 2018 for smaller devs that don't hit some invisible popularity threshold. That's currently speculation on my part based on various conversations I've had with other devs. Basically the long tail could die.

That's why it's super-important to build up wishlists and do marketing and to make a marketable game etc. All the usual stuff. You gotta make sure you have a good launch to have a chance, unless your game has virtually no budget and you don't care.

Hope you found this thread useful. Got any questions?

And once again, please wishlist our game. Thanks!

store.steampowered.com/app/993790/Anc…

Oh yeah giant caveat! As per my original blog post about this, the 0.5 wishlists value I stated is the median value from the data I collected! You might actually get double that OR a lot lower e.g. 0.1. There are no guarantees, so be careful out there! greyaliengames.com/blog/how-many-…

Also big thanks for all the RTs! Appreciated. Gotta spread the word so people know what to expect and to er get more wishlists for my game. I'm transparent like that.